Ireland
supports a ban on West Bank settlement products even though the European Union
is unlikely to impose one, its Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore
stated.
"Ireland would support a ban at EU level, and put it forward as
an option the Council might consider," Gilmore said.
He wrote this
opinion earlier this month in a letter to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs
and Trade, the text of which was posted on the web Friday by the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz.
Gilmore said he supported a settlement products ban on
moral, not legal grounds. "I believe there is a moral case for banning
settlement products, and I agree it could have a symbolic," Gilmore
wrote. It would be consistent with EU values and positions to exclude
settlement products from the EU, he wrote.
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